Nice cloaking device, jerks...

While photographing a coronal mass ejection (which is not nearly as dirty as it sounds), NASA's creatively named Heliospheric Imager-1 (or sun-ball picture-taker-of-er-one) captured what internet crazies are calling a massive, cloaked alien ship.

Above: Exclusive NASA photo of the massive Alien Starship 

with its cloaking device engaged.

Although I'd watch former X-Men

crush the dreams of aspiring singers.

Sigh. Scientists, or 'assassins of joy' as I'm starting to think of them as, were quick to call it out as a totally non-alien after-image quirk of photography. Bummer. You know, part of me would love for this to be true because it would mean proof that this incomprehensibly ancient and unimaginably vast universe had turned out more than one intelligent species, especially since its primary concerns are (in order of importance) who's winning X-Factor and Facebook. Oh, and don't get too excited, it's not X-Men spin-off X-Factor, it's some American Idol rip-off where Paula Abdul cries a lot.

It's miles in diameter, vaporizes cites

and withstands direct nuclear strikes.

It's only weakness: mid-90's Macs.

The other part of me would be terribly disappointed to know that the aliens who had crossed the impossible void between the stars had cheaped out on the cloaking device. Like seriously, they've mastered interstellar travel but the thing that's supposed to keep primitive, backwater species like ours from spotting the mothership can be foiled by YouTube and a guy who calls himself siniXster? Seems like a pretty big flaw. That's like saying a jet liner can be taken down by the EMF given off by a cell phone. Also, is it siny-ex-ter? Sin-ick-ster? Why do people still think the letter 'x' makes things sound cool? 

On the upside It's pretty nice to see a sci-fi term like 'cloaking device' dropped so casually in the media. The closest we've come to a real-life cloaking device is this invisible British tank, which if you squint, face away from it and cover your ears, could possibly sneak up on you if you were already dead. The twenty-first century isn't nearly as futurey as books and movies said it would be. Where are our hover-cars and virtual-reality helmets, huh? Maybe by thinking more like the future, we can catch up. To that end I'd like to propose that we add the phrases 'comm-unit' (cell phone) and 'sub-sonic transport' (plane) to our daily conversation. Who's with me?

Here, I'll use them in a sentence:
"Holy shit! Our sub-orbital transport is going to crash because 
some idiot didn't de-activate their comm-unit!"